


that first step

by Megakatze (LaufeiaEvans)



Category: Dalton Academy Series
Genre: Dalton Big Bang 2020, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Therapy, on god we gon GET you a competent therapist bro!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24869227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaufeiaEvans/pseuds/Megakatze
Summary: Dalton Big Bang Day 22: TherapyWhen Logan's new therapist shares some compelling insights, he might finally be ready to give this recovery thing a chance.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	that first step

Logan’s new therapist pisses him off.

He hates the way she keeps pushing her glasses up on the bridge of her nose, like she’s looking down on him - or, more accurately, like he’s a specimen she’s observing in a lab. He hates the feeling of being scrutinized, which he gets far more here than at the last office he’d been to. That guy, with his oversized sweaters and frustratingly calm demeanor, had just wanted to _talk_ \- he didn’t look at Logan like he was _studying_ him.

But the thing Logan hates most about this new girl is that he’s actually starting to like her.

In the middle of their third session, when he’s slumped over in her office chair with his arms crossed over his chest, she pauses mid-sentence and sets down her clipboard in her lap. Narrowing her eyes at Logan, she notes, “You really don’t want to be here, do you?”

Logan had figured it was obvious, and he doesn’t really feel the need to respond.

“I get it,” she says, so casually that it catches Logan off guard. “You know, I hated shrinks too when I was your age.”

Logan frowns.

“You feel like you’re under a microscope,” she continues, hitting way too close to the truth. “Like there’s something wrong with you and they’re just trying to figure out what it is. Is that right?”

He shrinks back into the chair, suddenly feeling more uncomfortable than angry. He nods once, a gesture she returns thoughtfully.

“Full disclosure,” she says, sounding far less professional than she has up to now. “I _am_ trying to diagnose you. But that’s only so we can make sure you’re on the right medication.” She glances down at his chart. “You’ve never had a formal psychiatric diagnosis, correct?”

Logan fights back the urge to recoil at those words. “No,” he mutters. “They just put me on Prozac hoping it would shut me up.”

“And is that working for you?” she asks skeptically, as if she already knows the answer. Logan scoffs.

“If by ‘working’ you mean ‘makes me too numb to get angry,’ then sure,” he grumbles. “It works great.”

“Yes, that’s the problem,” she muses, tapping her pencil on her clipboard. “That’s not how it’s supposed to work. So we’d like to figure out exactly why it isn’t working, and maybe find something that does.”

Logan doesn’t answer. He highly doubts anything she gives him is going to help.

“You’ve been bouncing your leg this entire time,” the woman says, shifting the conversation entirely. Logan freezes. He hadn’t noticed, but she’s right. “Are you feeling nervous?”

“Not how I’d describe it,” he replies without thinking, and judging by the look on her face that was the _wrong_ thing to say.

“How would you describe it?” She sits back, and Logan half expects her to pick up her pencil and start taking notes. But she doesn’t - she actually sets the whole clipboard down on her desk, swinging one leg over her lap and folding her hands in front of her. Logan blinks.

“I’m pissed,” he says, fully honest for perhaps the first time in her presence. “I’m pissed that I’m so fucked up I need to see a shrink in the first place. I’m pissed that I have to be here now. I’d rather be back at school.”

“What would you rather be doing?”

He pauses, chewing on his lip. “Music,” he says finally, a little disgusted that she’s convinced him to go along with this act.

“Do you play?”

“Piano. And I sing,” he adds, shrugging his shoulders.

“Maybe I can get a piano in here,” she says, and Logan looks up in surprise. She’s smiling. “It looks like you could use something to occupy your hands.”

Logan scoffs. He doesn’t want to be treated like some hyperactive toddler in need of a fidget toy.

“I’m good, thanks,” he says curtly.

She smiles, her unshakeable positivity kind of infuriating. “Well, unfortunately, our time is up for this week, so you’ll need to find somewhere else to go sulk.” The amused grin on her face fades into an expression of sympathy. “But for the next week, I’d like you to try shifting your mindset a little bit. You’re not fucked up, and that isn’t why you’re here. I’m not trying to diagnose you because I think there’s something wrong with _you_. I’m trying to figure out what’s going wrong in your brain that’s making it work against you.”

Logan frowns, but he doesn’t argue, instead mulling over her words.

“When you get a cold, it’s not because you failed as a person. It’s because there’s something wrong with your body, so you take medicine to fix it. You rest, you drink water, you give your body a break so it can heal itself. That’s what we’re trying to do here, only we aren’t strengthening your immune system, we’re strengthening your mind. I’m going to give you tools that you can use to better handle situations when your brain isn’t doing what you want it to. And maybe, if we can figure out what’s going wrong in your brain, we can find you some medicine that will help it work more normally.”

Something about her words strikes a chord with Logan. He’d never considered his brain to be separate from the rest of him, but the way she explains it makes a lot of sense.

“Think about that,” she says, getting to her feet. “And maybe next week we can try something different.”

—

The next time Logan visits Dr. Collier, she has a brand-new Casio keyboard set up in the corner.

“What do you think?” she greets him, beaming. Logan blinks, wide-eyed.

“It’s…a keyboard,” he notes lamely, and she laughs.

“I know, I know, it’s probably not what you’re used to.” She gestures over to it, and he hesitates. “Go on. Sit.”

Logan gingerly takes a seat on the tiny stool in front of the keyboard, facing half toward her and half toward the keys. She’s still grinning. “I thought we could try something different today,” she says, settling in the chair in front of her desk. “Why don’t you play something?”

He blinks. “Now?”

She looks amused, almost in a condescending way. He fights the urge to roll his eyes. “Yes,” she says gently. “It’ll give you something to focus on while we talk.”

Logan still doesn’t want to _talk_ at all, but at least she’s giving him something to do. Reluctantly, he maneuvers his legs under the keyboard, which is set up just a bit too close to the floor. But he can reach it well enough, and when his fingers settle on the keys he can feel his shoulders relaxing already.

Dr. Collier stays silent while he begins to play, and he keeps his eyes fixed on his hands, ignoring the suffocating feeling of her staring at him. He starts with a simple melody, probably not anything she would recognize. It wouldn’t surprise him if she started to psychoanalyze his music choices in the absence of any actual knowledge about him.

“Last time we met, you told me you were pissed,” she says finally. Logan stays focused on the music. “How are you feeling today?”

“Still pissed,” he mutters, although the tension he’s carrying in his muscles is starting to evaporate.

“Does the music help?”

Logan briefly considers lying, but he doesn’t want to go back to sitting across from her while she stares him down. If he has to be here, at least this way he can spend the time doing something that he likes.

“Yeah,” he says after a moment. He sneaks a glance at her from the corner of his eye, and she’s smiling.

“What are you pissed at?” Her tone surprises him, sounding more like she’s trying to open up a bitching session than doing any kind of therapy. “Still wish you were back at school?”

“Yes,” he mutters. Then, after a pause: “I had to bail on my friends for dinner tonight.”

“Oof.” She sounds almost _sincere_ , and he’s wondering what game she’s playing. “Did they make plans without you?”

“Not really plans.” He switches up the melody, playing something a little more familiar. “They know I have therapy on Tuesdays. But Julian wanted Chinese, and the cafeteria food kinda sucks, so…”

It’s the first time he’s mentioned one of his friends by name, and he knows she notices.

“So I’m sure you’d much rather be having Chinese with Julian,” she notes, and Logan laughs dryly. “Well, lucky for you you’re only stuck here for an hour. Maybe you’ll make it back in time for dessert.”

It takes him a second to realize it’s a joke.

“They’re teenage boys,” he counters. “They eat way faster than that.”

She snickers, and Logan surprises himself by cracking a smile.

“Your friends,” she says. “Julian, and…?”

“Derek,” he supplies.

“A trio, then.” He’s waiting for her to ask if there are any more, for the inevitable disappointment when she discovers that those two are his only real friends. But it doesn’t come. “What are they like?”

“Julian’s cool,” he says carefully, not sure exactly how much he wants to reveal. “He’s not always around. Busy with…with work.”

She doesn’t press him, waits for him to elaborate himself. He pauses a moment, focusing on his playing.

“But he’s been back a while, and it’s…it’s good. It’s nice.” He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes. “He made me come in today,” he admits. “I didn’t want to. But he wouldn’t let me skip.”

“He cares about you,” she notes, and Logan almost laughs at how unintentionally spot-on that statement is. “That’s good.”

“Yeah.” He opens his eyes, pausing for a moment to play a few disjointed chords. “Derek...well, he mothers us both,” he says dryly. “Always has. It’s only gotten worse since—”

He cuts himself off. Dr. Collier knows, of course. About the reason he’d switched to weekly sessions during the school year, and why he’d seen a trauma specialist all summer before coming to her. But it wasn’t something they talked about.

“So both of your friends support you getting treatment,” she says, and he cringes inwardly at her phrasing. He’s not a cancer patient, for fuck’s sake.

“They want me to be better,” Logan mutters. “They’re always pushing me to take my meds. Probably hoping I’ll stop flipping out on them so much.”

“Do you fight with your friends often?” she asks, ignoring the medication issue entirely.

Logan doesn’t answer right away. She gives him a moment, letting him start on a new, slower piece that he has to struggle to remember. He hasn’t completely lost himself in the music, however.

“Not…often,” he says finally. “Not now, at least. We’re all…pretty careful around each other, after…what happened.” He breathes deeply, trying to focus on the movement of his hands over the keys. “But they—they piss me off sometimes,” he admits.

“What do they do that pisses you off?”

“Derek…his mother hen routine gets old quick.” Dr. Collier fades into the back of Logan’s mind as he struggles to put his thoughts in order. He’s talking more to himself now, finding it surprisingly difficult to articulate exactly _why_ his friends make him angry. “He keeps telling me to take my meds, like that’ll help. Sometimes I—” He stops, the words getting caught in his throat. He takes a deep breath and tries again. “Sometimes it feels like he just wants me to be numb so he doesn’t have to deal with me.”

Her voice is soft and sure when she replies, “Do you really think he’d still be your friend if that was true?”

Logan sighs. He knows, of course, that Derek and Julian have promised to stick by him no matter what. That the three of them are ride or die for each other regardless of how bad Logan’s anger gets, or how much pressure Derek is under, or how long Julian is away filming. But after learning that it was _his_ fault Julian kept running away, that _his_ actions had made Julian consider leaving Dalton for good…it was hard not to wonder what it would take for the other shoe to drop.

“He’s gotta have a limit,” he says with a shrug, in lieu of actually trying to explain himself.

Dr. Collier doesn’t press further. She gives him a few more moments to play before once again speaking up.

“We’re almost out of time,” she reminds him gently, and his hands slow on the keyboard. He turns away reluctantly, almost sad to have to stop.

“What does anger feel like for you?” she says suddenly, meeting his eyes for the first time that session.

Logan isn’t quite sure how to respond. “…bad?” he tries, and she chuckles a little.

“I’m going to give you a homework assignment,” she says with a playful smile. “Next time you feel angry—not just normal anger, but _really_ angry, like you’re about to flip out—I want you to think about how it feels. Not just emotionally, but physically. Where in your body do you feel it?”

Logan blinks. He tries to think back to what his outbursts felt like from a physical standpoint, but he can’t come up with anything. He’s usually too focused on breaking things to worry about how his body feels.

“Once you’ve calmed down, write about it. Tell me what the anger feels like. Next week, we can look at that, and see if we can’t come up with some ways to make it feel less…bad.”

—

Dr. Collier’s writing assignment gets finished sooner than Logan expected.

Not two days after he’d told her that his friends weren’t fighting often, Julian decides to test that statement. Logan’s fuming, almost too angry to even think about his therapy homework, until he’s pacing his room alone and he happens to notice a blue notebook open on his desk. _What the hell_ , he thinks. At least it’ll give him something to do with his hands.

He flips to a new page, struggling to maintain a grip on his pencil. He pauses, thinking about what Dr. Collier had said. _Where in your body do you feel it?_

His hands are shaking, the muscles in his arms bunched tight like he’s itching to punch something. He is, he knows it, but he forces himself to stay put, instead focusing on the rest of his body. His chest feels tight, like a heavy weight is pressing down on him. He takes a deep, shaky breath and realizes that he’d been struggling to breathe. His stomach hurts, too, an unsettling feeling in his gut that he might have mistaken for hunger otherwise. He takes another deep breath, and it helps more than he’d expected.

Pressing the pencil down hard to still his hand, he begins to write.

The next week, he sits opposite Dr. Collier, wringing his hands as she reads over what he’s written.

“You’re a great writer,” she says with a smile as she sets down the paper. Logan’s seated at the piano again, but he hasn’t started to play. She had wanted to read his assignment first.

“Does that tell you something?” he asks hesitantly. He’d been turning the question over in his mind all week. Why ask in the first place? Could the way he felt when he was angry somehow tell her _why_ he was feeling like this?

But instead of answering, she just hands his writing assignment back to him with a smile. “It wasn’t for me,” she says simply. “But did it tell _you_ anything?”

Logan frowns.

“No,” he says honestly. “I mean, breathing helped. A little. But I didn’t think to do it until later.”

She just nods.

“What prompted this?” She gestures to the paper in his lap. “When you wrote this, what were you angry about?”

Logan hesitates, still not sure how much he wants to share. Julian doesn’t need more people prying into his personal life, especially not now. But then again, Dr. Collier is his therapist. Isn’t she bound by some kind of privacy agreement?

“Julian’s…he’s an actor,” he says, deciding not to get _too_ specific. “He leaves, sometimes, when he gets a movie deal. After the…after what happened—” He looks away quickly. “He came back, when he recovered. And he was supposed to stay. But…his agent called him last week, wanting him to come back and audition.” He pauses, taking a deep breath and staring at the floor. “And I didn’t want him to go.”

He sneaks a glance back at Dr. Collier, who gives him a sympathetic nod.

“Of course you don’t,” she says simply, and Logan blinks.

“Yeah, that’s…that’s what I said, but—“

Logan cringes inwardly, remembering. He’d flown off the handle, naturally. Julian had tried to talk him down, tried to make him see reason, but he’d been so consumed with anger at the fact that Julian would even _consider_ going back to Hollywood now, at the fact that his agent was _encouraging_ it. Didn’t he know he still needed time to get better? That he was so much safer at Dalton, so much _happier_ , when he could be with his friends?

Or…maybe he wasn’t, and maybe that was the problem.

“Derek said I should let him do what he wants,” Logan muttered. “That I can’t control him. But—can’t anyone else see what a bad idea it is? To send him back there, back to work? He should be finishing school, like the rest of us.”

Dr. Collier nods slowly.

“Do you want him to stay because you think he’d be happier,” she says carefully, “or because _you_ would be?”

That stops Logan short.

“You don’t want your friend to leave,” she explains, and it’s a little weird to have someone else describe Logan’s own thoughts back to him like this. “Of _course_ you don’t, Logan. You’re trying to get better, here, and your friends are your best support system.”

Logan chews on his lower lip.

“It’s completely natural to want Julian to stay. To be upset, even. But Derek is right. You can’t control him.” She sits back in her chair, sharply contrasting Logan’s slouched posture, his hands still wringing together in his lap. “What you _can_ control is yourself. You can choose to flip out, to give in to your anger and yell at Julian for making a bad choice. Or you can choose to be honest, and explain to him the real reasons why you don’t want him to go.”

At that, Logan scoffs. “It’s not like I have a choice in the matter,” he mumbles, staring down at his lap. “If I could control my anger, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Learning to control your anger is exactly why you _are_ here,” she counters. “Look. You don’t want to be angry, right?”

Logan frowns, glancing up at her. “Of course I don’t. Why would I want to be like this?”

“You say that,” she says with a tiny smile. “But you’d be surprised. Sometimes it’s easier to let yourself be angry and lash out than to confront the emotions that you’re actually feeling.”

“And what emotions do you think I’m actually feeling?” he says skeptically. “Because it definitely felt like anger to me.”

“Anger is what we call a secondary emotion,” Dr. Collier explains, and Logan finds that for once, he’s actually interested in what she has to say. “People express anger outwardly, but the underlying source of that emotion can be a lot of different things. I had you do this exercise to give you some practice in introspection, to get a better idea of what the underlying causes of your anger are. It’s easier to recognize your emotions when you’re throwing things, but a lot harder to pinpoint what drove you to that point.”

Logan’s face softens. “Oh,” he says quietly.

“And I think you already know,” she adds, giving him a meaningful look. “And I can tell you don’t want to talk about it.”

He feels a wave of dread wash over him.

“It’s not because of…what happened,” he mumbles, picking at the skin on his thumb. “I was like this before that. Nothing’s changed there.”

“A lot has changed, Logan. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.” He opens his mouth to argue, but she cuts him off. “But I wasn’t talking about that. I think your anxiety started well before you went through that trauma.”

Logan frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Your friends,” she explains. “Last week, you told me you think Derek wants you medicated so he won’t have to deal with you. Something tells me you didn’t start thinking that way after surviving a fire.”

He looks down at his lap, picking at his thumb again.

“Everyone else leaves,” he mumbles, barely audible. He thinks of Blaine, of Joshua, of his father. Of all the people in his life who have given up on him. “Why should Derek be any different?”

Dr. Collier ducks her head, trying to catch his eye.

“Why don’t you play me something?” she says softly, nodding to the keyboard. “And then we can talk about that.”


End file.
